A woman in Hertfordshire has hatched three ducklings from eggs purchased in Waitrose.
Charli Lello, 29, bought the Clarence Court Braddock Whites duck eggs after watching a video on Facebook of someone hatching quail eggs from a supermarket.
“While I was in Waitrose, I saw the duck eggs and thought maybe they would work as well,” she told the BBC.
Ms Lello had recently been furloughed from her role as an assistant manager in a shop and thought trying to hatch the eggs would be a good way to pass the time.
“I was so excited for them to hatch but I still had in the back of my mind that these are supermarket eggs,” she added.
Ms Lello explained that she was doubtful the eggs would hatch.
“They have been collected, bashed around on a delivery truck, then rattled around on a trolley onto a shelf, picked up and put down by who knows how many people, so they still might not go all the way.”
However, just one month after putting the eggs into an incubator, Ms Lello noticed that the eggs were beginning to hatch.
She has named the three ducklings Beep, Peep, and Meep and described them as the “cutest little balls of fluff”.
“The only reason I could try was because I am currently furloughed and have the time to raise them to an age where they won’t need me all day. Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t have been possible or fair on them,” Ms Lello said.
A spokesperson for Clarence Court farms told the BBC: ”It is a feat of remarkably slim odds that a duckling has been hatched. But we acknowledge that it’s not impossible.”
A spokesperson for Waitrose added that fertilised eggs are safe to eat and are ”entirely indistinguishable” from normal eggs unless they are incubated.
